Make Your Own Electric Guitar [Paperback]

Melvyn Hiscock (Author), Brian May (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2003

For some, it is not enough to buy a guitar—the challenge of designing and hand-making a unique, customized instrument is the dream. Since 1986, these people have turned to one book: Make Your Own Electric Guitar. Written in a clear, relaxed style, it covers every facet of guitar design and construction, as well as electronic theory and practice, and full woodworking and wiring techniques—all supported with plenty of photos and diagrams. Now in a revised and expanded edition, Make Your Own Electric Guitar will enable any musician or enthusiast with basic woodworking skills to create a uniquely valuable instrument.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: NBS Publications; 2nd edition (March 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0953104907
• ISBN-13: 978-0953104901
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #204,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

82 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Detailed Guide, January 20, 2000

By 

Ringo_43 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Make Your Own Electric Guitar (Paperback)

This book represents a well-thought out, very complete guide for anyone wishing to build their own guitar. Several introductory chapters guide you through the steps of designing your own instrument and address specific possible problem areas such as frets, truss rods, neck angle & bridge height, saftey, proper tools, laying out hardware positions, etc.

The next three chapters give step-by-step construction notes for three specific guitars. (A carved-top set neck model, a flame-maple topped tele, and an 8-string bass featuring some exotic woods) These three guitars were well choosen for this book: between the three of them you get just about any characteristic you'd want on an instrument.

Final chapters deal with finish, set-up, and asembling a guitar from components. Although the author is British, Americans shouldn't have any trouble - measurments are given in inches and metric, and the author has taken care to explain most British slang terms in USA-friendly terms. The writing itself is very well done, easily understood, and has enough humor to lighten the mood without spoiling it.

Out of several similar books I've seen/read, I would vote this one as best written and most complete.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful information but not a comprehensive guide, September 12, 2004

By 

Keith Carlsen "widgeonkeeper" (Asheville, NC, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Make Your Own Electric Guitar (Paperback)

This book is an informative discussion about guitar building, and shows Melvyn Hiscock's techniques and designs pretty well,but it is not a book to enable a person with no woodworking or shop experience to make a guitar without substantial additional resources and a fair amount of scrap wood being generated. One thing that my attempts at guitarmaking have taught me is that if you set even reasonably high standards for yourself, and practice every technique on scrap wood repeatedly first, you will still go through a fair amount of wood before you have a guitar you can wave under the nose of the salesman at the local PRS dealer with pride.

Also, Hiscock is British and there are some differences between UK and American practice, both in terminology and in the way certain tools, and woods, are selected and used. (Sycamore is popular in England because of availabiility and because famous Brit builders such as Tony Zemaitis used it extensively, but no one in the U.S. does.) It doesn't interfere with the content of the book, but if you go into an Ace Hardware and ask for Perspex, you'll be given only a strange look rather than a sheet of Plexiglas.

This book is definitely better than some others, but would still be best used in conjunction with others, both guitar-specific and for general woodworking.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book covering solid body guitar construction, August 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Make Your Own Electric Guitar (Paperback)

I enjoyed this book. I found it pleasant to read while giving thorough coverage to the three main styles of solid body guitar construction (bolt on neck, glued in neck, and neck-through-body). After the introductory chapters, a guitar of each of these styles is built from start to finish in separate chapters. These serve as an excellent example of the unique features of each of the three designs. The author spends considerable effort to point out strengths and weaknesses in well known designs from the major manufacturers. This is presented to help the reader in the design phase. He also covers the critical relationship between neck angle and bridge height more thoroughly than I have seen in any other book. Despite the title, this book covers only SOLID body guitar and bass construction. No coverage is given to archtop or hollow body electric guitar styles.